Something of Value Eric Bogle

I can see the Southern Cross tonight
While here below, bathed in it's light
The Dreamtime land safe, snug and tight is sleeping
Wrapped in complacency and contentedness
No discordant sounds disturb our rest
While the gentle souls we've dispossesed are weeping

We took it all by the gun and the sword
By the right of our race and in the name of our God
Though as outcasts ourselves, transported, condemned
None knew better than we the injustice of men

We took it all in our hunger and need
Enslaved by our past and consumed by our greed
And left them to beg for the scraps at our door
While we called them drunkards and wasters and whores
They've been drowning, drowning in their tears
For the last two hundread years

From England's New Jerusalem
To the Dreamtime land the tall ships came
With human cattle in convict chains to bind them
In the grim fight just to stay alive
Dreams must struggle to survive
Few could see the glitt'ring prize before them